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Saturday, 16 January 2016

THE OBAMA LEGACY

Introduction

I always
believed that rating presidents is an inane exercise for many reasons including
the burden of the impossible task of comparing a president from the early 19th
century with one in the early 21st century under very different domestic political,
economic, social conditions and developments in the international arena that
impact the balance of power. How can anyone possibly compare Andrew Jackson with
Lyndon Johnson, James Polk with George W. Bush, and Lincoln with Kennedy? This is
a mystery best reserved for fiction rather than serious scholarship.

Presidents
have to be judged on the merits of the effectiveness of their policies at the
specific period in history and not across the span of time as though they
governed at the same time as a future or a past president. Moreover, they have
to be judged against the realities of the constraints of the political system
and the Constitution, the economic and social structure, and of course the
dominant culture and sub-cultures of the nation that are impossible to change
for any president.

The absurd “political
beauty contest” of rating presidents is more fitting for the media seeking to
entice, manipulate, distract and brainwash the public by providing a
superficial overview of presidents that often includes personal traits and “likeability
factors” as though a candidate for president is a candidate for dating or going
out to socialize with voters. Not that the cult of personality is anything new
in politics or the exclusive domain of contemporary bourgeois politicians in
America. However, having a candidate that “makes people feel good” so that the
mass voters form a popular political base is really a key criteria for
bourgeois politicians and it is what is expected of them by those who provide
the financing to their campaigns.

Not to
belabor the issue of people judging by appearances and falling for “image-making”,
especially their leaders as Nicolo Machiavelli (The Prince) argued five
centuries ago, but it is extremely rare that anything of substance is analyzed
when it comes to rating presidents like beauty queens. When substantive issues
are raised, they are simply a reflection of the person’s ideological
orientation without full disclosure of criteria used to rate presidents by the
individual doing the rating. Considering that more than half of US voters do
not identify with either Republican or Democrat party, ranking presidents
becomes just another intellectual exercise whose significance rests in the
attempt to convince people that popularity sovereignty is at works when this is
far from true.

History will
always judge Obama from the prism of his race – the reality that he was the
first African-American president in a country with a very long history of
racism that only intensified under this president largely because of the
socioeconomic polarization owing to the lingering effects of the Great
Recession of 2008 and neoliberal policies, but also the deep institutional and
cultural racism of America. Where Obama actually delivered anything more than
the symbolic political and psychological satisfaction to people who believed a
minority must have the opportunity to become president is another question
addressed below. Beyond the race issue that will also be in the forefront of
his legacy, the others are the economy and foreign policy.

The first issue
is that Obama ran for president in 2008 when the Great Recession was the worst
economic contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Of course, he promised
to revive the economy and gave the impression that he was the new FDR of the 21st
century; an indication that he would undertake massive reforms rather than
preserve the status quo. Whether he revived the economy on a sound basis for
the duration, whether he revived finance capitalism and corporate capitalism to
the detriment of the middle class and workers living standards is something
that people can judge for themselves looking at statistics of declining living
standards for the majority despite unemployment reaching 5% in 2015-2016.

The second
issue is that Obama promised to change America’s image in the world after
George W. Bush, a president ranking among the worst in history and who had sunk
the nation in two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and the ‘war on terror’ that had
contributed to a monumental budgetary deficit without any tangible results in
terms of reducing jihadist activities globally and engendering greater
stability in the Middle East. Obama came to office promising to create a
positive image of America around the world, one that would not have the country
as the most hated on the planet and one that would strive to restore leadership
without the aggressive militarist baggage that Bush had created. He also
promised to respect human rights, to put an end to war crimes that many
governments and organizations had accused the US of committing, and to close
down the Guantanamo prison where political prisoners were and still are kept.
Whether any of this was achieved or we are right back where Obama started in
2008 in terms of terrorism and a tainted US image in the world is another issue
we will analyze below.

Arthur
Schlesinger and the Criteria for judging presidents

In 1948, an election year
that kept Harry Truman, the first Cold War president, in the White House,
historian Arthur Schlesinger was the first scholar to conduct a poll of 55 colleagues
to rate presidents on “performance”. Making a reputation as a scholar of Andrew
Jackson – the pro-slavery president of Indian removal policy fame - Schlesinger
joined the Kennedy administration and provided his own criteria for ranking
presidents, including: 1. “great presidents who were strong party men” like
Jackson; 2. They confronted the Supreme Court (as did FDR), and 3. They aroused
strong opposition as did Kennedy. One is immediately struck by the absence of
key criteria appropriate for any democracy, namely, economic improvement for
the majority of the people, maintaining peace, safeguarding civil rights and
human rights, and improving social justice to achieve the ideal of a truly
democratic society. None of these are included by Schlesinger or the vast
majority of those ranking presidents since 1948.

Instead of judging
presidents by policy results impacting the lives of all people, Schlesinger and
all of those endeavoring to do same since the late 1940s listed such things as
dealing with “turning points in history” – regardless of the result benefiting
the majority of the population or resulting to its detriment.Although Schlesinger was molded by FDR’s New
Deal when he was young, he came of age as a Truman Cold War Democrat who
influenced the ideological orientation of American liberalism as expressed in
the 1960s. Typical of an American scholar rating presidents on criteria of
preserving and strengthening the system of government, Schlesinger simply
assumed presidents ranking must be conducted from the perspective of the white
male Anglo-Saxon elites.

a. Winning
wars without considering the cost to society both short and long term; b. Strengthening
the economy and financial institutions geared to raise GDP but not necessarily closing
the rich-poor economic gap;c. Dealing
with public corruption but not necessarily private sector corruption that went
as unchecked or minimally regulated in the 19th as it is in the 21st
century; d. Unifying
the party under strong consensus to mobilize popular support but not addressing
the needs of the people who comprise the popular party base; e. Imposing
executive branch power over legislative and judicial to harmonize and rationalize
capitalist interests, but not necessarily to provide a social safety net for
the poor, women and minorities; f. Confronting
the political opposition to demonstrate Machiavellian leadership qualities for
the sake of a “strong nation” but not for the improvement of citizens’ welfare.

In 2016 amid a climate of extreme
right wing populist Republican presidential candidates trying to outdo one
another on which one is more militarist and more in favor of strengthening
corporate capital to the detriment of the majority, Schlesinger would be
considered a left-wing liberal merely because he would be outspoken against the
neo-Fascist orientation of the Republican Party as detrimental to forging a
middle-of-the-road consensus. Nevertheless, Schlesinger remains the American
bourgeois scholar icon who defined the criteria for rating presidents. Such
criteria always takes into account
preserving the political economic and social status quo, no matter how
detrimental to the welfare of its citizens. After all, Schlesinger supported
the Bay of Pigs operation and the Vietnam War that were disasters by any one’s
estimation, including his own. Scholars who follow the Schlesinger
model have no problem ranking presidents today on:

1. How well did the president
conduct policy to fight terrorism, rather than how we can mitigate or eliminate
terrorism by addressing its root causes that range from the Palestinian
Question to repeated interventions in the Middle East with intent to destabilize
and divide for the same of securing spheres of influence; 2. How well did the
president help economic recovery based solely on GDP, stock market performance,
and “official employment” criteria, rather than living standards improvements,
upward social mobility, and strengthening the middle class and workers as the
popular base of a democracy. (Unofficial is twice as high and part time and
seasonal account for distortions in official stats);3. How strong US defense is
for the purpose of benefiting the military-industrial complex as Eisenhower
warned more than half century ago, instead of how US foreign policy benefits
its citizens;4. How can we strengthen
corporate welfare that entails massive transfer of income through the fiscal
system and in subsidies at the local, state and federal levels, no matter the
consequences to the social safety net, the public debt, and viability of the
capitalist system?

If the sole criterion
is how militarily strong has any given president made the country, then we
could argue that this is no different than the criterion of a dictator. If the
criterion how effective the president was in strengthening the economy without
the benefits accruing across the broad population, then we could argue that the
criteria ought to be same as for non-Western dictators in power to benefit
themselves and a small circle of people backing them. After all, the top 1%
according to the New York Times determines fiscal policy to benefit itself. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html?_r=0).If the criterion is how effective is a
president in mobilizing public support for political consensus to govern on
behalf of the capitalist class while keeping a docile working class and middle
class, then this ought to be fully disclosed as all other criteria.

1.Overall, was Obama
a Good President?

Judged on the Schlesinger criteria, Obama was an
average president who held the status quo in tact at a critical time of the
Great Recession that started under Bush and two wars that proved a foreign
policy and economic disastersDuring the 2008 presidential
campaign, I argued on website of the World Association for International Studies
(Stanford University) that people should be cautious about buying into the
'Obama mystique', that his presence was largely symbolic, intended to
de-radicalize the masses and not
substantive, that it was obvious his policies would not be very different than
those of Bush who has the distinction of earning the rightful place of one of
the worst American presidents.

Both Bush and Obama promised that bailout money in the trillions was
necessary to save jobs and keep the economy going, presumably living standards
steady. Taxpayer money went into banks and corporations but people still lost
their jobs and suffered sharp drop in living standards, while the economy
remains anemic. Bush was in office eight
years and his gift to the world was two wars and $3.3 trillion in debt - 3.3%
of GDP. After seven years in office, Obama continued the wars of the previous
administration, started a new on in Libya and Syria, and added $3.3 trillion or
2.7% of GDP to the sovereign debt in his first three years alone. While Bush
inherited a $3 trillion debt, Obama inherited $6.3 trillion debt and the
Republican economic crisis. The debt Obama added technically belongs to his
predecessor, although it was his decision to continue along the same fiscal and
defense policy lines as his predecessor. He continued the policy of
strengthening corporate welfare that only adds debt and weakens the middle
class, as he continued militarist adventures, expanding them to Syria that
benefit the defense industry at the expense of the people.

Could Obama be the
president of the people as he presented himself? Considering the source of
funding for Obama’s 2008 campaign, it is difficult to imagine this was the
choice of the common man and woman. “Goldman Sachs donated nearly a million
bucks to Obama. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase donated nearly $1.5 million to the
Obama campaign while Morgan Stanley pitched in over a half million dollars.
When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of
Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. Goldman Sachs
is followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase,
Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google… Obama has
a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain.”New York Times(July 1, 2008).

The US could have done worse with McCain and Romney
who would have sunk the economy deeper in debt by providing even more corporate
welfare gifts and lower tax brackets for the top 1%. In short, the people have the choice of who
will be less reckless in foreign affairs and domestic policy that would make
the majority even poorer. It is not a choice of which president will represent
the workers and the middle class but which president will cause less damage
because the system is such that it caters to the 1%.

2.Obama,
Terrorism, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?

In his last state of the union, Obama boasted, “The United States of America is the most powerful
nation on Earth. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations
combined.”Historically, the US has
had a bipartisan foreign policy, with differences on tactics, rather than
goals. While the Republicans are generally blatant militarists insisting on
unilateral foreign policy approach, Democrats like Obama will consider multilateralism
once they have no choice as has been the case with Syria and Ukraine where
interventionism just has not worked out as they envisioned. Obama did not start the wars on Iraq and
Afghanistan and certainly not the war on terror. Nevertheless, he did not seek
political solutions to crises, yielding to the militarist establishment. According
to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs,
the results of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as follows:

1. 1. Over 370,000 people have
died due to direct war violence, and many more indirectly (The US Green Party
estimate of Iraqis dead is one million)

210,000 civilians have
been killed as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the
conflict

7.6 million — the
number of war refugees and displaced persons

The US federal price tag for the Iraq war is
about 4.4 trillion dollars

The wars have been accompanied by violations of
human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad

These are the
remarkable costs that militarism has delivered to America under both Bush and
Obama, and this does not include money spent on Homeland Security that both
Bush and Obama insist on maintaining because they made the war on terror a
permanent fixture of US foreign and defense policy. According to one estimate,
the US spends more than $100 billion annually on counter-terrorism, while the
cost to the world economy is estimated in the trillions. The war
against “Muslim terrorism”–the ultimate specter and trap haunting US foreign
policy - has expanded under Obama. Under Obama, there were operations across
North Africa especially in Libya on the pretext of wanting to help “spread
democracy”, when in fact the US was working toward the same goal as terrorists
to bring down anti-Western regimes. The same was the case with Syria and Yemen.
While Obama pulled troops out of hot spots, he expanded drone warfare that many
governments and organizations have accused for killing innocent civilians that
the US dismisses as “collateral damage”.

Obama had the
opportunity to change the course of US foreign policy but he chose to continue
along the same lines. He could have rejected using the war on terror as the
pretext to perpetuate Pax Americana, and he could have chosen political
solutions to crises as he ultimately did with Iran over the nuclear issue. His
legacy will be that he maintained the foreign policy, defense policy and war on
terror policy that Bush started, never addressing root causes of conflicts including
the Palestinian Question and backing Saudi Arabia which has been behind
jihadist terrorism for decades.

The growing socioeconomic gap and downward social
mobility owing to a fiscal system that favor the very wealthy is his greatest
failure along with a militarist foreign policy disguised as “multilateral
engagement” because of the deals with Iran and Cuba, and more recently
“Metternich-style” negotiations to resolve the Syria impasse where ISIS reigns
supreme. Although official unemployment is at 5%, living standards are continuing
to decline for the majority of the middle class and workers saddled with debt. Even
worse, the prospects of young people are very dim because even those coming out
of college with a degree cannot find jobs in their own field and certainly not
a good paying job. The land of opportunity is now the land of opportunism and
Obama who did not create this phenomenon simply contributed to it instead of
doing what he could to halt it.

The post-2008 recovery has been very weak because job
creation came at the expense of low-wage jobs, including part time. One reason
that January 2016 was one of the worst for Wall Street, which predicts economic
trends, is because the US economy is consumer driven but the consumer is too
deep in debt. WALMART closing 169 stores is indicative of low purchasing power
of its customers who tend to be working class and lower middle class. When one
looks at the map of closings, it is no surprise that they are throughout the
south that is in fact the core of America’s “Third World” with a high
concentration of poor.

4.Was
Obama responsible for racial wars and police confrontations?

Of course Obama did not create racial wars and
contrary to the right-wing media in the US he is hardly the cause for the
divisions that exist in a society that has always been divided owing to class,
race and ethnicity gaps the political regime and economy create. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-obama-legacy-project-1452643869

However, neither he nor his Justice Department also
headed by a minority did anything about police shooting to kill, not injure at
unarmed black youth in the inner cities of America. Obama did nothing about the
unofficial torture inside jail cells as well as at the Homan Square facility
where at least 3500 people, 82% of them black were detained without due process
and often tortured. The US government knew of the link between Homan Square and
Guantanamo as it knew of the deep racist culture in the police department, but
it did nothing. The same is true for most of the US where institutional racist
practices prevail in the criminal justice system.(http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/05/homan-square-chicago-thousands-detained)

What exactly has Obama done for Blacks? In 2013, the
NAACP announced that Obama had done nothing to improve the condition of blacks.
When we examine the statistics on the overall condition of the black community
we find that in fact blacks are worse off now than they were under the
right-wing Republican Bush-Cheney administration.

1.Black home ownership has declined from 46 to
43% under Obama who had no problem providing hundreds of billions in bank and
corporate bailouts and corporate subsidies.

3.Black poverty is at around 28% in 2012, and
black children suffer poverty rates are four times higher than white children. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/14/black-child-poverty-rate-holds-steady-even-as-other-groups-see-declines/

“More than half of all people in Black families (54.9%) and 70% of people in Black families headed by single
mothers were living in poverty in 1959. Black poverty rates
reached their lowest levels in 2000 (38.6% and 21.2%
respectively) just before the dot com bubble burst of 2000. Black poverty rates
have been slowly increasing since reaching 25.7%
for all people in Black families and 41.2% for people in Black
families headed by single mothers.” http://blackdemographics.com/households/poverty/

4.Black unemployment historically has averaged
about double to that of whites. Obama has done nothing to reverse this trend,
as blacks continue to dominate in low-skill and low-wage jobs. Blacks have seen
few gains from the “Obama recovery”.It
must be stressed that the
annual growth rate under Obama has averaged 2.24% in comparison with 3.97% in
all economic recoveries since the 1960s. In such an anemic climate black unemployment is twice that of the general population. While
official unemployment if at 5%, it is at 23% for blacks. Black male
unemployment for 18 to 34 years of age runs at 43%. What can Obama do about this in a free
enterprise economy where neoliberal thinking prevails? Not much and that is
exactly what he has done, which is why we have the statistics I have listed
above. http://www.ibtimes.com/black-unemployment-rate-2015-better-economy-african-americans-see-minimal-gains-1837870

While Obama did not create any of the institutional
and structural or cultural problems confronting blacks, he has done nothing to
address them other than going on TV and decrying racism and inequality. That is
nice, but Lyndon Johnson did the same thing and then he at least followed up
with some measures to back up the liberal apologetic rhetoric.

5.Was
Obama prepared for the Presidency and did he unify the country?

The assumption is that to become president one must
hold some high public office. However, we have examples of presidents who held
such high offices but they were disasters because of policies they followed. Besides,
the president surrounds himself with an administration of people that run
various departments in accordance with the considerable input of lobbyists who
literally write legislation to benefit their corporate clients. Obama’s
administration reflected what corporate America wanted, just as those administrations
of his predecessors. The administration team is imposed upon the president by
various powerful interest groups, mainly Wall Street favorites. The institution
of the presidency is already captive to such interests no matter who sits in
the Oval Office. The only choice is whether to strengthen the energy sector,
vs. high tech sector, banking vs. traditional manufacturing, etc.

The issue of “unifying” for the Democrat party
financial backers was really one of “de-radicalizing” the disgruntled workers
and middle class after eight years of Bush, and co-opting the masses in the
same manner as FDR when he too inherited a major economic crisis that could
have polarized American society. According to public opinion polls, Obama’s
popularity is much higher at roughly 50/50 split in approval/disapproval in
comparison to Bush at roughly 65% disapproval and 35% approval after seven
years in office. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_bush_first_term_job_approval.html)

Obama’s major achievement was that he managed to
protect and preserve the neoliberal establishment with predominantly Clinton
administration individuals representing Wall Street. Neo-corporatism under
Obama reached new levels. This is because he is black and managed to appeal to
women, minorities and gay-rights supporters. These voters saw him as their
president, regardless of his mainstream policies in the domains of foreign
affairs, economic, fiscal and monetary policy as well as labor-management
relations that continued to deteriorate to the point of collective bargaining coming
under serious threat from the Supreme Court. While Obama essentially served traditional interests
as his predecessors, he managed to include people who otherwise felt
disenfranchised. This does not mean that there were not the extreme right wingers
dominating the media constantly complaining that he was not sufficiently militarist
and sufficiently supportive of corporate welfare and neo-liberalism like his
predecessor Bush.

6.What will be Obama’s lasting legacy?

Beyond the
color of his skin and its symbolism in a country with a long history of racism
imbedded in its institutions and culture, Obama was a restorative president who
upheld neoliberal status quo and militarism with some modifications on health
care reform, personal lifestyle choice issues, and a commitment to restore some
regulations to preserve the pluralistic society he inherited. His own and
Democrat rhetoric aside about achievements that are really disasters such as
the war on terror, the bottom line is that terrorism, as the State Department
defines it, has increased under Obama largely because of policies the
administration pursued resulting in feeding militant Muslims throughout the
world.

US
involvement in Libya and Syria where indirect collaboration with jihadists manifested
the absurd contradictions of US foreign policy turned out to be an unmitigated
disaster by any measure one wishes to use. Providing Israel with military aid
in August 2014, with Democrats voting in favor, including presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders, amid Tel Aviv’s bombing of Gaza where children and
women fell victims is a reality from which no rhetoric can wash away as part of
the Obama legacy. The US policy of Israel regardless of its crimes against the
Palestinians, and backing Saudi Arabia in its various foreign policy disasters
intended to weaken Iran and Russia have also backfired. If this was the kind of
America Obama had promised in 2008 running against John McCain, would he still have
won the race to the White House?

US involvement
in Ukraine was equally disastrous and it yielded absolutely no benefit for the
US other than to tighten the NATO containment policy around Russia. In a public
opinion poll in March 2014, only 18% of Americans said that the US ought to
become involved in Ukraine; this despite massive media propaganda trying to
convince people otherwise. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/03/ukraine-poll_n_4891224.html)
The irony is that Obama and the Democrats only disagree with their Republican
counterparts on foreign policy and defense policy tactics rather than goals
that are to maintain Pax Americana no matter the cost to the majority of the
people at home and of course at the receiving end overseas.

It is pointless
to judge the president of the US on the basis of Socialist expectations because
the institution exists to prevent Socialism and strengthen capitalism. One can
only judge the president within the perimeters of the existing system. However,
if a president, and this includes Obama, runs campaign promises of broadening
the democratic system to engender more social justice, human rights, economic
and judicial equality for all people, but then fails to deliver on every single
promise, then analysts have every right to emphasize the failure of the
president based on his broken promises intended to strengthen the system by
deceiving voters and de-radicalizing them as Obama did. In short, even if a
president wanted to make systemic changes to achieve some type of ideal
Jeffersonian democracy, it is simply impossible under the existing social
order. In September 2013, Obama admitted
that the top 1% grabbed 95%
of all new income, leaving just 5% of the remaining for the entire population? (http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/15/news/economy/income-inequality-obama/;

The road to downward
socioeconomic mobility and rising aspects of authoritarianism in America
continued under Obama and this is his legacy as historians of the future will
confirm. When the National Archives and the future
Obama presidential library declassify documents and make them available to researchers
in the middle of the this century, we will have a clearer picture of this
administration. Of course, the performance of the presidents who follow Obama will
have an impact on how his rankings will evolve, as I suspect that the US will
be going through some very difficult times in this century because socioeconomic
and political polarization combined with militarist adventures will continue to
weaken America.

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takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

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to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
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a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
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